


The Infinite Harmony of Numbers

by westminsterabi



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Mathematics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-20
Updated: 2013-05-20
Packaged: 2017-12-12 11:38:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/811180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/westminsterabi/pseuds/westminsterabi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Canon-ish!Jim - Mathematician, although not a professor. Abstract character development related to Sherlock, Jim, and their own personal relationships with numbers (because I get the feeling that Sherlock likes maths too, he just likes deduction more).</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Infinite Harmony of Numbers

Factorials always seemed friendly; they have factors from 0 up until the number of which you are taking the factorial, and they are not as large as exponentials. They are, however, difficult to calculate, and I always found that irritating. 

The numbers always used to drift around me, swirling in patterns and mixing with each other, creating harmonious division, sweeter than music and more powerful than prose. More understandable than any of the idiots around me. I remember once, when I was in Year 7 and one of the boys sitting beside me said “What’s the exclamation point? Is it excited?” 

I didn’t bother to correct him; anyone who was so stupid probably couldn’t understand the delicacy of a factorial; the perfection of the countdown and all the countless things you can figure from them. They always hated me; they were cruel to me, but sometimes they acknowledged that I was good at maths, and that was enough. When it took the shape of making me do their homework, that was something else entirely, but when they took me and held me up as the very best at school, that was something I could be proud of. 

Probability is so fickle. It depends on something that you’ve witnessed, data that you’ve collected that is less than perfect, because no die is perfect, no person is certain to be caught in the right place at the right time, and the flaws in the formation of everything affect it so that the numbers can never be exact. Probability hurts when you can’t sit down with a pencil and figure it out. 

_What’s the probability that Sherlock will call that number?_

_What’s the probability that he’ll see through me?_

People think that I have no doubts, that I see through everything, that I’m cocky and confident to such an enormous degree that I never second-guess anything. Here’s the truth: I second-guess any operation I cannot conduct on paper. Where my beautiful binomial coefficients are useless, that’s where things go wrong; I cannot calculate _p_ (success). I have never failed, but the world is unstable where people behave unpredictably. I know more than anyone that there is always a small probability of failure, that one trial cannot possible affect the next but even my great mathematical brain believes that if I have a certain _p_ (failure), I must fail one day. I must get caught. 

So I am vigilant. I ensure that there are safeguards, I ensure that _p_ (failure) = 0, but when Sherlock came along, the probability was smashed. The temperamental harmony that I had formed was destroyed, and for that, I resented him. He made me insecure again; he made me want to run back to my numbers, where I am safe. Everything is safe in the numbers, where the probability is king and the world obeys my calculations. Theoretically, I should never fail.


End file.
